A crackling, well-written yarn that expertly takes its spitfire characters through plenty of twists and turns.
After a horrific accident, one teenager and her friends begin to suspect that there is something very wrong in their quiet little town.
This first book in Ashta’s Ridgemore series finds Joss Bryson and her best friends—Hunt Fletcher, Layla Rafferty, Brady Rafferty, and Griffin Conway (on whom Joss has a devastating secret crush)—looking forward to their senior year of high school when the unthinkable happens: Brady suffers a fall from a balcony and dies…except he doesn’t. Despite being impaled on exposed rebar, Brady makes a miraculous recovery that surprises everyone—except for the friend group’s parents, who suddenly begin acting strangely and attempt to downplay Brady’s accident. Soon, Brady begins suffering from increasingly realistic nightmares about him and his friends growing up in a lab that begin to feel more like memories: “Everything about it feels familiar, like I’d know it again if I saw it. And, guys, when we were there, we didn’t call our parents Mom or Dad. We didn’t even know their names. We were their patients, their experiments, nothing more.” As Joss and her friends slowly uncover the truth, the arrival of a stranger (whose snake oil salesman persona practically screams, ‘I’m evil!’) threatens everything they have ever known and loved. Ashta’s natural-sounding dialogue thankfully never panders to the teenage cast. The various revelations strewn throughout the novel prove genuinely surprising, moving the plot forward in refreshingly organic ways. The author has created a loveably acerbic and witty narrator in Joss, whose sarcasm can’t hide a fierce love for and loyalty to her friends. From the novel’s opening line (“As I tipped back my beer, I strained to hear what Layla was saying to that jackass Rich over the noise of the party”), the narrative builds momentum as it moves toward vaguely sinister territory before the jaw-dropping cliffhanger of an ending, which will leave readers impatiently awaiting the next installment.
A crackling, well-written yarn that expertly takes its spitfire characters through plenty of twists and turns.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2024
ISBN: 9781039478527
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Podium Publishing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A light and entertaining plot-driven romance.
A Connecticut girl and her best friend devise a series of plans in order to achieve their goals: following a dream and winning back an ex.
Eighteen-year-old Audrey Barbour has a Master Plan: attend Blue Ridge Glass School in North Carolina and someday turn her Etsy shop, Golightly Glass, into a thriving business. But her uber-wealthy parents insist that she instead follow in their footsteps and go to business school. So Audrey decides to go find the tuition money she needs with help from her best friend, Henry Chen. Henry needs a favor, too: He hopes that fake dating Audrey will help him win back his ex-girlfriend, and he points out to a reluctant Audrey that this could make her crush, Griffin, notice her. While Audrey’s parents vacation in France for three weeks, the pair rent out the Barbour mansion on the Long Island Sound. Soon romantic chemistry grows alongside their business partnership. Despite the pair’s great preparation and an abundance of secondary characters with connections and talents to help pull off their increasingly ambitious ideas, plans go awry, leaving Audrey and Henry scrambling and second-guessing their choices. The pacing is even, but the characters often take a back seat to the whirlwind of activity that drives the plot, with the emphasis falling on each person’s practical skills and their role in keeping the action moving over their emotional bonds. Audrey is white, and Henry’s surname cues him as Chinese American.
A light and entertaining plot-driven romance. (Romance. 14-18)Pub Date: March 31, 2026
ISBN: 9780593904794
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Delacorte Romance
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head.
The finely drawn characters capture readers’ attention in this debut.
Autumn and Phineas, nicknamed Finny, were born a week apart; their mothers are still best friends. Growing up, Autumn and Finny were like peas in a pod despite their differences: Autumn is “quirky and odd,” while Finny is “sweet and shy and everyone like[s] him.” But in eighth grade, Autumn and Finny stop being friends due to an unexpected kiss. They drift apart and find new friends, but their friendship keeps asserting itself at parties, shared holiday gatherings and random encounters. In the summer after graduation, Autumn and Finny reconnect and are finally ready to be more than friends. But on August 8, everything changes, and Autumn has to rely on all her strength to move on. Autumn’s coming-of-age is sensitively chronicled, with a wide range of experiences and events shaping her character. Even secondary characters are well-rounded, with their own histories and motivations.
There’s not much plot here, but readers will relish the opportunity to climb inside Autumn’s head. (Fiction. 14 & up)Pub Date: April 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4022-7782-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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